Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

The multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.

He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.

Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.